Dr. Allen Taylor, CCNY Class of 1967 and ardent supporter of his alma mater.
With limited funds and an overwhelming desire to pursue a college education, Allen Taylor had few options outside The City College of New York with its free but highly competitive admission policy. Decades later, the Class of 1967 alumnus and Professor Emeritus of Nutrition, Ophthalmology, and Developmental, Molecular and Chemical Biology at Tufts University, is giving back to his alma mater in a big way.
He’s funding CCNY’s new Allen Taylor Academic Promise Awards for Undergraduates and Ph.D.-student-Mentors of undergraduates in Chemistry & Biochemistry in the Division of Science. The Allen Taylor Awards, colloquially, will be awarded to promising undergraduates with financial need to encourage academic excellence in chemistry and biochemistry. The yearly award program, scheduled to select its first recipients in Fall 2025, will pair each undergraduate with a Ph.D.-level mentor and co-awardee. These partners will meet at two-week intervals to discuss academic issues that could range from coursework challenges to career preparation, summarizing their experiences in brief reports at the conclusion of each semester.
"The City College of New York is extremely grateful to Dr. Taylor for this support to our students, which will be so critical as they continue along their educational path and focus on post-graduate career pathways,” said Barbara Evans, associate executive director, Office of Institutional Advancement, Communications and External Relations (OIACER)/Foundation for City College. “Having one-to-one mentoring from the beginning, with PhD students who have taken the same path, will be a boon to these mentees' future success."
This award program continues Taylor’s long-time support for scholarship and mentorship programs at CCNY.
Taylor, who earned a B.S. in chemistry, has a good reason for his philanthropy.
“Gratitude,” he said. “I was grateful for the opportunities that I've had in my life. I got a free, wonderful education at City College. And from City College I went to Rutgers, from Rutgers to Berkeley where I had a fabulous six years and then a brief stop at Williams College for a few years, and then to Harvard and Tufts.
“And so it's been a wonderful career and I think all the opportunities that came along with it wouldn’t have ever been possible had I not gone to college and City College was the only school I could go to. I didn’t have the money to go anywhere else.”
Taylor went on to a distinguished career in science, that included directing Tufts University’s Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) for 40 years. His research focused on the pathophysiology of- and ways to ameliorate or delay progress of - age-related eye diseases, specifically age-related macular degeneration and cataract.
In addition, Taylor, with his wife Kim Kronenberg, is co-Director of STEP (Science Training Encouraging Peace), which pairs Israeli and Palestinian science students for the length of a graduate school program.
He received CCNY’s Townsend Harris Medal in 2022 for outstanding postgraduate achievement in his field.
Click here to read more about Taylor.
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Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided a high-quality and affordable education to generations of New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. CCNY embraces its position at the forefront of social change. It is ranked #1 by the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights out of 369 selective public colleges in the United States on the overall mobility index. This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at CCNY can move up two or more income quintiles. Education research organization Degree Choices ranks CCNY #1 nationally among universities for economic return on investment. In addition, the Center for World University Rankings places CCNY in the top 1.8% of universities worldwide in terms of academic excellence. Labor analytics firm Lightcast puts at $3.2 billion CCNY’s annual economic impact on the regional economy (5 boroughs and 5 adjacent counties) and quantifies the “for dollar” return on investment to students, taxpayers and society. At City College, more than 15,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in eight schools and divisions, driven by significant funded research, creativity and scholarship. In 2023, CCNY launched its most expansive fundraising campaign, ever. The campaign, titled “Doing Remarkable Things Together” seeks to bring the College’s Foundation to more than $1 billion in total assets in support of the College mission. CCNY is as diverse, dynamic and visionary as New York City itself. View CCNY Media Kit.
Jay Mwamba
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